1. Field
The following description relates to a Computer-Aided Diagnosis (CAD) apparatus and method for high-speed diagnosis using consecutive medical images.
2. Description of Related Art
In general, doctors identify an image to be used to diagnose a disease by receiving and analyzing ultrasonic medical images in real time from a probe, which is put in contact with a diseased area of a patient's body. Alternatively, doctors analyze a two- or three-dimensional (2D/3D) image sequence that is stored offline. In particular, when using a medical image acquired in real time from a probe or using a 3D volume image that is stored offline, the doctors determine whether the diseased area of a patient's body is benign or malignant based on the set of received consecutive 2D images that are displayed on a screen.
Recently, medical images are analyzed using a Computer-Aided Diagnosis (CAD) system. Such an approach potentially automates analysis of medical images to make a diagnosis. The CAD system detects and tracks a lesion using medical images, and classifies whether a lesion is benign or malignant. Generally, medical images are captured at 30 or more frames per second in the case of real-time image diagnosis. However, with limited computing performance of a CAD system, it is hard to perform analysis and classification on a medical image in real time, because of the large amounts of data involved and the complicated calculations required to properly process the images.